by Joseph Carlson
The problem with terrorist in the United States and trying to locate and define their organizations is that every four years we change presidents. In early 2000 George W. Bush was elected President of the United States. This brought changes to cabinet members as well as changes to the National Security Council.
Although some of the people stayed many did not. So, the rest had to be brought up to speed. Bill Clinton had several meetings with George W. Bush and told him that his biggest regret as president was the fact that he couldn't get Bin Laden. Several of George W. Bush's advisors used their meetings to tell him the importance of terrorism and what it could do.
In short they made it a priority. Or at least tried to. Some of the people in charge were not equipped to deal with this kind of new threat and we were getting less and less help from places like Pakistan.
It was also discovered that we needed to follow the chain of money more and more. Something we didn't do in the beginning and was now becoming increasingly important. We still couldn't tell how Bin Laden and his men were getting all of their funding. Mostly through donations, but how and where and more importantly how it was all funneling in was still a mystery to the National Security Council.
Time was running out though. Most of the things came to pass in early 2001. We as a nation still had no idea about the planes or the people on them. We'll see next week if there we any leads on finding answers.
The 9/11 Commission Report is available in bookstores and digitally.
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